


plans

by anddirtyrain



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 20:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13621515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anddirtyrain/pseuds/anddirtyrain





	plans

Maggie pulls away after a long moment, that still doesn’t seem long enough.

 

Crime didn’t stop for holidays, and certainly not made up ones, and she’d been on her feet for the entirety of her shift. She missed her girl.

 

“Thank you for this,” she tells her, unclipping her badge and laying it -along with her gun- on the breakfast island. She takes off her jacket, and once the items are stripped from her, she somehow feels lighter. As though she’d metaphorically taken off her armor after a long day, and now she got to be just Maggie. Not Captain Sawyer, not the person to look to when something went to shit. Just herself. She breathes in the smell of the food. “That smells great. You didn't have to.”

 

She’d told her as much, last night, but when Alex had suggested a small dinner at her apartment, just the two of them, to celebrate -or not- Valentine’s day, Maggie hadn’t refused. She was trying to put her past behind her, and she’d recently learned ignoring it didn’t do much in the way of that.

 

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Alex says, immediately walking to the kitchen and opening her ridge. She produces a beer, and opens it for Maggie. “And I did,” she says, handing her the cold bottle.  

 

“I mean...It’s our first Valentine’s Day since-” Alex pauses. Maggie takes a drink of her beer and then sets it down. She’s working on working through her shit, but she doesn’t like thinking about it. Alex keeps going. “ _ You _ didn’t have to. The first time around, I mean, our first Valentine’s Day.” Maggie frowns. It’s been a while. Centuries.

 

“We never talked about it again but I think we should,” Alex says, determined. “I...I was selfish.”

 

It’s the way she says it, that had Maggie knowing this isn’t a casual conversation.

 

The practiced way she words it leads Maggie to know Alex has been thinking about this, has turned it over in her mind until she figured out a way of bringing it up. She does that a lot lately, tries not to spook her.

 

(And Alex didn’t use to be like that. She’d always jumped head first into everything, and Maggie had liked that about her, until she didn’t. Until she became one of the things Alex was so suddenly so sure she didn’t want. This Alex is more careful, more thoughtful, and she sometimes reminds Maggie of herself with the way she thinks so thoroughly about what to do and say. Then again, she’s not the only one who’s changed. Maggie did go on a one week trip to a cabin in the Rockies because she felt like it a few months ago, and a few weeks ago she adopted a dog because she drove by the pound and had had a hunch about going in. That reminds her of Alex.

 

And isn’t that a thing, how she can see pieces of themselves reflected in each other, as if neither time nor distance had affected how they kept growing together, wrapped like vines around the other’s heart even when they swore it was over.) 

 

“Alex- what are you talking about?”

 

“I’m talking about how I wanted you to love Valentine’s Day because I finally started liking the idea of it.” She says it matter-of-factly, with a self deprecating twing that Maggie isn’t used to when it comes to them. She’d thought herself the expert of feeling like a failure when it comes to them. 

 

“I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did, I was just...making it up to you.” She mentions, frowning as she remembers. It doesn’t matter now. “Alex, that was years ago.”

 

It was, and that surprises her. Two years ago to the date, to be exact.

 

Alex shakes her head. “It was two years ago but a year ago I was acting the same.”

 

Maggie frowns. “Wh-”

 

“When we broke up…”

 

Maggie closes her eyes. She doesn’t like to talk about it, even now, weeks after they decided to try again, slowly, measuredly. They haven’t really talked about what happened, only the aftermath of it.

 

Alex may not want kids, Maggie might. They’ll figure it out when they get there. But the both of them, together, matters the most to the both of them.

They’re on the same page now. What’s the point of rehashing it?

 

“Alex…”

 

“See, I always thought about having kids.” Alex smiles, pressing her lips together afterward, and Maggie gets the familiar twinge of fear she’s accepted as worth it if it’s a part of being with Alex again. Besides, Danvers promised her history wouldn’t repeat itself, and Maggie found it in herself to trust her word once again. “It was...the plan I was supposed to follow. I planned to graduate high school, go to Stanford, and become a doctor, marry some guy, and have 2 kids and a dog.”

 

Maggie nods encouragingly.

 

“I just...I never planned to get an alien for a sister, or to get kicked out of sanford, and I never in my wildest dreams would have thought about being a field operative instead of the career I chose when I was twelve. Twelve!” Alex meets her eyes, the hazel-brown depths swallowing her whole. Maggie has drowned there before, and she’d go back, time and time again, for only the promise of Alex’s lips as a life vest. “And then I fell in love with you,” she says. “And I never planned for that. You made me realize who I was. And that’s the best surprise life ever gave me.”

 

Maggie’s eyes burn, and the back of her throat itches with held back emotion.

 

She doesn’t know how a simple conversation ended up here, two steps away from a candle lit decorated table, her girlfriend wearing a beautiful red dress.

 

A tear falls from Alex’s eye.

 

“Somewhere along the way, I forgot to make adjustments to the plan.”

 

Maggie’s breath catches.

 

“I never had to, before. Everything with Kara and Stanford and the DEO recruiting me, those things just happened to me. But then you chose me and we were going to get married and I thought the plan was back on track.” Alex wipes at her cheeks while Maggie finds it hard to breathe. She hasn’t heard this variation of the reasons before.Alex has never explained what happened, like this. “But then Kara was miserable and my dad was still gone and we were, fighting over dumb little things, and it all….that wasn’t part of the plan. Everything just got knocked off track and I lost...sight of what really mattered.”

 

Maggie swallows the thickness in her throat. She needs Alex to say it, and she hates that she does, that somewhere deep inside she’s a woman that needs her girlfriend to spell out that she’s important to her, that she matters.

“I lost sight of us. Of _ you _ .”

 

Alex takes a step closer, and Maggie feels herself shudder when Alex grabs her hand and it feels like a live wire between them.

 

“It took me...a while, to realize that kids weren’t as necessary as I thought. That the plan wasn’t that important.”

 

Maggie shakes her head, the awful pounding need to say the truth for the truth itself, even when it means sinking herself into the ground. It’s her flaw. Answering that she didn’t go to a date because she got distracted at work with an interesting case, instead of lying and making excuses about being forced to take an extra shift. Telling her dad that the card she sent her best friend wasn’t a joke or a prank but her feelings, written in red ink. Telling Alex that she doesn’t see children in their future even as she felt this coiling tension in her, the inkling that she’s lying as she says she feels the same.

 

It always ends with Maggie holding  a duffle bag by the side of the road, alone.  

 

“But you still want them and-”

 

“I’d  _ like _ to be a mom, yes,” Alex interrupts her. “I’ve thought about it. And it’s not just...because it’s what I always thought I’d be, but because it would mean something to me, to have that. But I realized during the time we were apart that I only really want it with you. I’d like to be a mom, but I want to be a mom only if it’s with you. And if it doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen. And that’s my new plan. I’m not giving anything up I’m just- I’m realizing I put things on a scale, and I did it all wrong. It”

 

That leaves her breathless. 

 

Alex had implied it, before, when they started talking about trying again, but Maggie had felt she’d been holding back, handling her with kid gloves. Back then, maybe she needed that, but she doesn’t anymore and she can see she was right. She doesn’t know what to make it, or what to do with the terrifying, overwhelming feeling that floods her at the thought that Alex wants to build a family with her in that way -she’s been here before, blindsided by the fear that they’ll end because their outlooks don’t match, and destroyed when she was proven right, but never before she’s felt like this....Honored. Touched. 

 

Maggie clears her throat.

 

“When I told you I never saw myself as a mom...that was the truth. I never even thought about it. This...picture perfect future my mom used to tell me about when I was a kid, where I’d get married to some man who wore a suit to work and how he’d take care of me so I wouldn't need to work and I’d stay home with the kids...I recoiled at it ever since I can remember. And after everything that happened when I was 14, it just never crossed my mind again. My plan was always to keep my head down and make something of myself, I didn’t have time for anyone else.”

 

She smiles sadly.

 

“You know...Getting married wasn't part of my plan, either. I never saw myself as someone’s wife. I don't know if it’s because I thought nobody would stick around that long or I wouldn't want them to -I just never pictured it. And yet when you asked…”

 

Maggie shakes her head.

 

“You changed my plans too, Alex. And I love you for it.”

 

Alex steps forward and kisses her, warm and wet and desperate for a few seconds, and it electrifies Maggie.

 

She takes a deep breath once Alex steps back.

 

“When you mentioned kids...I was caught off guard. You seemed so sure already.” Maggie hadn’t given it any thought at all, and the entire ground she’d been standing on destabilized when Alex mentioned children as though they were a certainty she’d never been asked about. “I felt like you’d left me behind, you were running a hundred miles ahead of me while I was barely testing my steps. And I didn’t understand it. Because you...you were all I needed. Us, together...it felt like everything I’d been walking to since I was a kid.”

 

“Oh, Maggie...I’m s-”

 

“Don’t. Kids weren’t part of my plan and I couldn't change my plan either. I thought...maybe I shouldn’t. That it wouldn’t be fair to our kids if I wasn’t sure or maybe...I wanted to know if I would be enough for you. And I wasn’t.” She shrugs. “And I wasn't surprised.”

 

Maybe that was the worst part of the whole ordeal, the way she’d felt so desperately  _ helpless _ .

 

Through that week or arguing, that felt more like Alex trying to sway her, to convince...Magie could see their ending coming the way you look at a car crash. Enthralled, unable to look away yet and unable to stop it.

 

“I’m sorry-”

  
“You-”

 

“I'm not apologizing for wanting children, I’m apologizing for hurting you the way I did. I never, never wanted you to feel abandoned. After what happened with your parents, I should’ve made sure that never happened.” Alex raises her hand, and the back of her fingers caresses down her side in a touch so tender it breaks he. “I’m sorry.”

 

Alex’s voice is awash in emotion.

 

Maggie nods. “I'm so-”

 

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Alex says firmly.

 

“I couldn't change my plans,” she says simply, knowing it’s not fault as much as it is her desire to matter to someone enough that she could be picked above all else. “I think neither of us could, back then.”

 

Alex takes a step closer, almost until they’re touching.

“And now?”

 

“Now...I think we could meet in the middle.”

  
  


“Always.” 

 


End file.
